


loose around the collar (like a homemade sweater)

by anneblacks



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Aro!Riley Matthews, Aromantic, Canon Rewrite, Episode: s01e20 Girl Meets First Date, Family, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Late Night Conversations, Marriage Proposal, Marriage Proposal gone WRONG (sorry Lucas), New Year's Eve, Nonbinary Isadora Smackle, Personal Growth, Sexuality Crisis, Texting, in a way? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27214678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneblacks/pseuds/anneblacks
Summary: She should have known something was coming the moment Lucas looked at her like he knew something she didn’t, or better yet when she’d nearly knocked her breakup speech cards out of her pocket with her kazoo moments ago.Instead of a final warning, all the red flags burst into flame and Riley gets the veryfun(re: absolutelymortifying) experience of standing frozen center-stage with her boyfriend of five years down on one knee and looking at her like she's hung the stars, and.Shit.Or: Lucas proposes. Riley is far beyond the realm of ready--and she doesn't think she ever will be.
Relationships: Lucas Friar & Riley Matthews, Lucas Friar/Riley Matthews, Maya Hart & Riley Matthews, Maya Hart/Josh Matthews
Comments: 21
Kudos: 39





	1. Untapped Potential?

**Author's Note:**

> this is unedited. WE DIE LIKE WOLVES (enjoy haha)
> 
> (Title is pulled from a recent poem of mine, which probably can be found on novagabon on tumblr)

It’s the perfect night for it, Riley thinks, looking out upon New York and all its lights--a night for decision-making, for moving forward, for good things and bad things and everything in between. New Year’s Eve is brimming with hope and brightness and all things _future,_ and she is enthusiastic for it even as her hands shake in nervousness the way they do when she’s prepping for a speech.

Maya is grinning from the corner, in her bubble of Josh and cold air and warm hands, and Riley takes a moment to smile at them fondly before she turns, setting her hot cocoa on the wall and breathing out shivering cold.

“Ready for the New Year?” asks Lucas, coming up behind her with a gentle hand and a bigger coat to settle around her shoulders.

“Always,” Riley tries, easily distracts herself with poetics, “There’s nothing like a fresh three hundred sixty-five days to look forward to. So much untapped potential.” Even though she thinks she’s said this before, maybe last New Year’s Eve, Lucas’ eyes still light up like they’re a novelty.

“There really is,” he agrees, voice all but trembling. “Speaking of potential--”

The countdown cuts him off before he can finish, and Riley turns around, ready to ask what he was going to say while she pulls her kazoo out of her pocket. Lucas just shakes his head, smiling.

“We have time,” he mouths, which Riley doesn’t completely get but is _just_ tired enough to be able to shrug off as they get to trusty number six.

But--she probably shouldn’t have dismissed it so easily, with her heart hammering in her ribs and anxious cold in her hands. She should have known something was coming the moment Lucas looked at her like he knew something she didn’t, or better yet when she’d nearly knocked her breakup speech cards out of her pocket with her kazoo moments ago.

Instead of a final warning, all the red flags burst into flame and Riley gets the very _fun_ (re: absolutely _mortifying_ ) experience of standing frozen center-stage with her boyfriend of five years down on one knee and looking at her like she’s hung the stars, and.

_Shit._

“Riley,” Lucas begins, like a song, like a prayer, and his voice is drowned out by the traffic twenty floors below them, the awed gasps around them.

 _Oh my God,_ she thinks, mortifyingly still, _oh my God he’s_ _proposing,_ _this isn’t how it was supposed to go,_ and frantically wills herself to move, her limbs lead-filled and angrily protesting when she goes to wave her arms around incoherently.

“I _can’t,_ ” she says in response to his confusion, “I can’t, I’m sorry, I--” she doesn’t even know where to start, and now that her mouth is working her body seems to be getting itself back in order enough to give her the coldly terrifying order to _run._


	2. Decisions, Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So Riley Matthews has Maya and Lucas, and psychology and the most wonderful family she could ask for, and yet—her hands are still trembling as she bursts out onto the New York sidewalk, twenty-something with her blood pounding in her ears and the choking feeling of empty lungs in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO IT HAS QUITE NEARLY BEEN A MONTH HOW ARE YOU GUYS DOING. I've been loaded down with schoolwork and I genuinely didn't think I'd even get to this story, but here we are, you staring at this Beginning Note, me staring at this computer screen, and the second chapter is here!! I hope you're all doing well, here's half an apology for the lateness but I'm also doing this while I should be working on a chemistry assignment so uh .5 of that goes to me, and I hope you enjoy!

Love has always been the center of Riley Matthew’s life, an intrinsic part of her world. It’s logical to want it; it’s logical to fall into it without warning, too.

It was the thing that kept her parents together despite all her mother’s stories; the thing that her grandparents still hold true between them; the thing that she was raised with, and then began choosing to surround herself with in books and shows and movies. The fate of a Matthews is to have a best friend they love beyond measure, and then to fall in love with someone and to get married and get a job that makes everything make sense.

“Riley, honey,” Topanga had said to her, her name gentle and affectionate, the perfect amount of love in every syllable—Riley had come home crying over Davis Jones kicking sand on her shoes when she’d said she wanted to marry him—and Topanga had stroked her hair and told her, “One day when you grow up, you’ll find the right person who lights up your world as soon as they step into it, and you’ll light up their world just as much. You’ll have to fight for them, but you’ll love them more than anything, and it’ll all be worth it to marry them.”

Maya pushed Riley into Lucas’s lap before she could even tell if she was struck dumb by his obvious attractiveness—Maya’s _told_ her what a cute boy is and she’s not _blind_ —or the fact that he was in the middle of reading _Black Beauty,_ and none of the pages are dog-eared like she thought all boys (excepting Farkle, who was more enigma than boy at the time) tended to do. Both of them seemed to take it as the former, so she was still flat out of words when Mrs. Rand demanded a seat, but he was a beautiful boy, so.

She had to fight for it—or rather, Maya did—but eventually they got to go on a first date. Instead of going _out,_ a group of middle schoolers who may know the city well but live in a clean-cut bit of New York, they spent the night in the Matthews’ living room playing board games and watching Disney movies. Mostly, Farkle and Maya had spent their time arguing over appropriate hot cocoa toppings on top of the kitchen table, as goes the Great Cocoa Debate which is still running several years later, and Riley found the courage into herself to ask about _Black Beauty_ and Lucas’s eyes _lit up._

They’d spent the rest of the night discussing horses, and then future careers, and then dreams: “Veterinarian,” he’d said to her, elbows leant on the table, still fiddling with the little Toad figure from their abandoned monopoly game. “I want to take care of animals—no matter how long it takes to get there, or what I have to do.” He’d tilted his head with a charming smile and asked, “What about you, Riley Matthews? Dreams and/or aspirations?”

“I want to make the world better,” Riley had said, feeling the weight of it shiver through her as she said it, and got a sparkling grin in return, and something in her bones shifted to make room for the fact that Lucas was a keeper.

❄

Riley Matthews has Maya and Lucas, and psychology and the most wonderful family she could ask for, and yet—her hands are still trembling as she bursts out onto the New York sidewalk, twenty-something with her blood pounding in her ears and the choking feeling of empty lungs in her chest.

“Oh my God,” she says, shaking, “oh my _God,_ ” and that’s all she can manage. This is insane. _She’s_ insane. The love of her life has just proposed and she's run away.

She can’t imagine how he’s feeling right now. She couldn’t imagine being in his place, with her whole world watching them, and Zay will be furious when he gets the chance to be. Farkle must be twisting himself backwards trying to figure out _why_ she ran away—his years away at Princeton have broken his telepathy in two, as she found out when he’d told her he’d expected her to go into something like photography or journalism—and the rest of them must be bewildered by this turn of events. _She’s_ bewildered by this turn of events. She’d thought he wouldn’t propose until _spring._

She should go back up there, or maybe she should—she should—Riley kicks her heel back against the snowy bottom step and releases a breath so big it obscures her vision for a moment with the cold.

She doesn’t know.

It’s odd, she thinks, not because she doesn’t know but because she’s never felt not knowing being this wholly big and utterly terrifying. In her entire history of living, not knowing has never made her feel so afraid before.

Riley grips her hands tightly together and remembers the advice Jasmine had given her the last time she’d visited, a week off from her job on the West Coast: _take a second. Breathe. Figure out your immediate next step._

Desperately, she thinks: Farkle’s is too far, and he’d interrogate her as soon as she got there. Uncle Eric couldn’t make it down from St. Upid Town, and Uncle Jack is on a business trip in France somewhere—he’d called earlier that evening. She could never crash Charlie’s New Year’s Celebrations, and… everyone else is otherwise unavailable.

She sighs, settles on the one with the most balanced list of pros and cons, and heads downtown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .......if you saw this before I fixed "veterinatian" no you didn't <3


	3. Take a Second to Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So,” says her legal godmother, setting down a mug of hot cocoa on the counter in front of Riley with a lack of wobble Riley _still_ hasn’t accomplished after years of bussing tables, “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but are you ready to let me know why my goddaughter showed up on my doorstep at three in the morning on the first day of the new year?”
> 
> Or: Riley heads downtown.

“So,” says her legal godmother, setting down a mug of hot cocoa on the counter in front of Riley with a lack of wobble Riley _still_ hasn’t accomplished after years of bussing tables, “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but are you ready to let me know why my goddaughter showed up on my doorstep at three in the morning on the first day of the new year?”

“Um,” Riley tries, and halts with the anxiety burning a trail up her spine. She feels the bile rise up her throat before she can even begin, and Angela levels her a warm, fond _look,_ reaching out a hand to squeeze Riley’s.

“You’re safe here, Sunshine,” Angela says, stern and mothering and gentle. “Nothing bad’s out to get you. Take a deep breath.”

“Yeah, I know,” Riley says. She takes a deep breath anyway, letting the smell of crisp peppermint triple-chocolate brownies—from what Angela’s told her was the day’s toil—fill her sense of smell. They’ve spent hours now talking about the crafts they love, and now the kitchen is quiet in the sort of tell-tale way that means it’s nearing sunrise. Before she can hold it off any longer, she blurts out, “Lucas proposed.”

She doesn’t mean for it to fall heavy on the kitchen counter, but it does anyway, like a surfboard flopping over instead of standing upright, spilling sand everywhere. Angela gestures for her to drink her hot cocoa in a godparental gesture she knows well from years of scattered bad nights and two-hour bus rides to the state over.

“I’d… he proposed on the same night I was going to break up with him.” Riley goes for the most straightforward way to say it, pulling out the index cards from her coat pocket—worn edges crinkle under Angela’s fingers as she hands it over. “I’d been thinking about it a lot, since that seminar Uncle Shawn took me to about the normativity of wives and kids and whole families? And Lucas just deserves…” she stops, considering, “It’s just—not like anyone else says it is.”

Angela’s turning over the breakup speech cards in her hands, brows furrowed. “What isn’t?”

Riley hesitates before telling her, “The entire relationship. It’s not like in the movies, or the poetry even, or how my parents or Maya and Josh describe it. We don’t love each other the same way.”

“No one loves each other the same way, Sunshine,” Angela ventures, still not understanding. “And the comparing—”

“No, it’s—” Riley shakes her head, the words for it still out of her grasp, “It’s just _different._ I don’t—I can’t explain it.”

She can feel Angela’s gaze on her even after she looks down. They both fiddle with their cups and listen to the quiet for a moment.

Riley sighs. “I don’t think, I just can’t talk about it and—have it make sense. I think I just need some time.”

Angela sighs, but when Riley looks up she’s got that fond, warm look on her face again and it really has to be fine if her godmother has that expression. “Okay,” Angela says, gentle. “Well, you can stay here as long as you need, but I want you to give your people a call first, alright? Let them know you’re okay.”

“I’ll send Maya a text and call in the morning.” And then, when Angela stays looking at her, “Thank you, Aunt Angela.”

They fall silent and small again with that, Angela finishing off her cocoa and going to arrange blankets on the couch after rinsing out their mugs in the sink, pressing a kiss to Riley’s forehead and going to bed.

Riley settles onto the couch and just lays there for a minute before reaching for her phone.

Her phone screen glares at her in the dark, and Riley grumbles a complaint into a couch pillow as she squints at it, skimming the spam and going straight to her messages just to text Maya. She just wants to sleep, but she needs to at least let them know she’s alive first. Maya’s several messages get more frantic as time’s passed, filled with keysmashes and frowny faces, but the last one is marked with less emojis, just a short and simple, _let me know ur ok._

 _I’m safe dw,_ Riley texts. _somewhere warm. and cozy. also_

 _what??????_ Maya texts back after several moments, like she’d done something like drop her phone when she’d seen the message. _riley WHAT??_

Riley smiles into her shoulder and texts, _I TOLD YOU aunt angela would love that painting. she said she cried over it_

There’s another pause, nearly palpable, and then Maya sends a cross-eyed picture of her, Josh’s shoulder in frame, the New York night in the background, and Riley falls asleep before she can see whatever else Maya’s said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again and hoping you're all well and healthy! It's been so long since I updated this one haha. I don't know how much this super-short little chapter fits in (though it does hit close to home in some sense) but I wanted to put Angela in here because she deserves more than what Girl Meets Hurricane was. I'm not sure how to focus on her specifically, as Riley's the main, but I'm hoping to have more of her in fic in the future. Her character really doesn't deserve any of what her actress had to go through on set (I went to research her for some dialogue reference and.... the sight was not pretty).
> 
> Anyway, again I hope you're all doing alright! Sending good vibes to you all.

**Author's Note:**

> WOW I'M JUST REALIZING HOW WILD THIS FIRST BIT IS! And also how the end note looks like it's longer than the actual story... what a vibe.
> 
> so... listen. I haven't spent much time on this--meaning I literally wrote this at three in the morning and am editing it as I write this note--but to preface, I just wanted to say that this is a kind of personal story--(I haven't got a clue if I've said this before) I've recently figured out that I'm aromantic asexual, which is a very vibey combination, and I've been trying to write a story that's reflected just about _any_ of the confusion that I went through to better understand myself, and--well, it was three in the morning, I was cold, and got a string of dialogue that fueled me to write... the beginning to something? I'm not sure where it's going to go but this is something I feel like I am going to pour my heart into until we can end out on a triumphant song and dance and poetic line haha, even if it may be a bit unrealistic/ooc at times--consider this me projecting, take it as it is, this is the best I can do at the moment. They're also going to be short, fair warning, and it's not going to be completely up to par, but spare me some mercy it's literally October and we're still in an actual pandemic.
> 
> I really am excited for this; I haven't written something that's made me feel so satisfied with the contents since maybe that one Riarlie fic haha, so fingers crossed I'll have the same feeling about this one. We're going where the wind takes us and I hope you all are up for the ride.
> 
> Come to my [tumblr and say hello!!](https://brilliantblindinglights.tumblr.com/)


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